Australian National University sells shares in Coal Seam Gas

Australia and indeed the World are increasingly threatened by massive investment in coal seam gas (CSG). CSG expansion has drawn vehement opposition in Australia from urban environmentalists and also from farmers opposed to despoiling of prime agricultural land and potential pollution of aquifer resources. Now the Australian National University (ANU) has disinvested in coal seam gas (CSG) development after student opposition to such investment (see “ANU removes itself from coal seam gas operations”).

Key quotes from report: “The Australian National University will sell its shares in Metgasco, a company involved in coal seam gas extraction in Northern NSW, following student opposition to the investment… The ANU currently holds a 1% share in Metgasco, worth around $1 million, making it the 12th largest shareholder. The ANU’s total investment portfolio is valued at over $1 billion. Students from the Collective say they discovered the investment in Metgasco’s annual report. They were spurred on by contact from several people in areas affected by Metgasco operations, who urged a push for divestment. The students launched their campaign by installing a ‘gas rig’ made out of milk crates in Union Court on campus and starting a petition.”

I made the following science-informed comment on Woroni:

“Great news! The students are correct – gas is dirty and can be dirtier than coal greenhouse gas (GHG)-wise. Most of natural gas is methane (CH4) which leaks (at 3.3% US average or up to 7.9% from fracking) and is 105 times worse than carbon dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas (GHG) on a 20 year time frame and with aerosol impacts included. In Victoria [a major Australian state] burning gas for power is half as dirty GHG-wise as burning coal but at 3.3% systemic leakage it is 1.2 times as dirty as Hazelwood (Victoria’s dirtiest coal-fired power plant) and at 7.9% leakage it is 2.1 times as dirty as Hazelwood (see this)”.

In 2009 the WBGU (that advises the German Government on climate change) estimated that for a 75% chance of avoiding a disastrous 2 degree Centigrade temperature rise (would you board a plane if there were a 25% chance of it crashing?) the World must emit no more than 600 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between 2010 and zero emissions in 2050. Australia as a world leading annual per capita greenhouse gas (GHG) polluter has ALREADY used up its “fair share” of this terminal GHG pollution budget and is now stealing the entitlement of other countries, including impoverished, climate change-threatened countries such as Somalia, Bangladesh and Kiribati (see “Shocking analysis by country of years left to zero emissions”).

Australia should be stopping gas and coal extraction and not opening up new mines for more carbon pollution.

Congratulations to the student activists! I worked at ANU as a Queen Elizabeth II Research Fellow 40 years ago and so am doubly pleased with the ANU action. Disinvestment represents a significant means of cutting greenhouse gas pollution and anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Pro-environment students, activists and investors around the world should follow the example of the ANU students and ANU management.

Dr Gideon Polya published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds". He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”; see also his contribution “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics”. He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for Peace and for Mother and Child see “Truth , Beauty & Saving the World – Science, Art & Nuclear, Greenhouse & Poverty Threats”).
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